New report urges councils to ramp up contingency planning to avert food disruption in any version of Brexit

Professor Terry Marsden, Director at Sustainable Places Research Institute, has co-authored a new report that says Local Authorities in the UK must strengthen planning for possible disruption due to Brexit and prepare for the role of communicating food information to the public.

The document, published as part of the Food Research Collaboration’s (FRC) Food Brexit Briefing series, urges council executives to draw on the local food expertise that exists within Local Authorities to strengthen contingency planning and communication capacity.

It refers to the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act, which calls for the formation of local Resilience Forums to deal with risks, and calls for clear communication with the public at times of disruption.

The briefing, written by food policy experts at City, University of London, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the University of Sussex and Cardiff University, also highlights the need to maintain pressure on Government to provide better information about food supply risks.

The briefing updates advice that was published in November 2018 and sent to every council in the United Kingdom urging them to set up food resilience teams to risk assess how different Brexit outcomes might affect the food supply in their local area.

The full report can be downloaded from the FRC website.